what can i do to improve?(photos)

First and foremost you could get huge improvements from better speaker placement!

+1 Dragon...

Fireplaces,.... Just this morning, I saw a live spot on the local fox affiliate in a designer home and the ~42" flat panel display was 7 feet to the top, right above the fireplace,....yep,....live with that for a while.

Symmetrical layout is of paramount importance. Oftentimes it takes skewing the entire room, on a 45 degree angle to address the common asymmetry associated with many typical residential living spaces,...if one is so inclined (pun intended).

HipHopFiend, assure your mains are farther forward than any other item in their immediate surroundings, toe them in to where they both point directly at the center position between the mains. This generally improves the frequency response, upper octave extension and should facilitate best imaging.

Don't get all caught up in any of the BS in high end cabling, etc, merely focus on optimizing your speakers to your space. This is where the big gains are to be had, acoustic optimization of loudspeakers to their room. When it's time to begin spending money on upgrades etc, focus again on acoustics/subwoofers/loudspeakers, and their optimization.



You need a highly capable center channel. Ideally, all three fronts should be identical, and placed evenly in a horizontal plane across the front. Don't sweat the rears until your fronts and sub system is sorted out. Obviously you want your rears placed properly etc, however they're of little consequence until your mains (LCR's) are squared away, and you've got some solid foundation with regard to a subwoofer system.

The first thing I'd do, is really examine your geometry of the entire room, and be willing to adjust the entire space around the LCR optimized placement. Second, a good sorting out of your subwoofer with regard to it's equalization in both the frequency and time domain. Considering some very simple acoustic treatments, home made and very little investment will help the acoustic environment of the room, ie bass traps. Taking things to the next level would include some measurement software, and beginning to explore the reflected energy in the room, and exactly how it impacts the listening position.

Yes, possessing ample power to the front speakers is very important. Emotiva has quite a decent product line, for fanless, multichannel, 2 channel, mono amps. You could also go pro audio route like QSC, Behringer Crown, etc., and mitigate any potential fan noise with acoustic hush box etc.

Adding outboard amplification should be a fairly noticable upgrade. Not a "blow you away" type scenario, however a nice and welcome change. An AVR's current capability is quite taxed at levels much lower and modest than one would anticipate IMO.


Best of luck and I hope this helps...my 2 cents...

Trying that for a start is better than nothing. Try it and take note of any improvements you may notice.



It depends and is something you will just have to try for yourself and see what happens sound quality wise. No one can say for sure it will be better as there are too many other variables involved. Though in theory it should be better from looking at your photos, as it would appear that the setup will be on the short wall and firing down the length of the room into the kitchen. "Theoretically" it should be easier to get a smoother frequency response but only trial and error will tell.

Now the only thing I would recommend for you to purchase at this stage is one of the higher levels over the free version of TrueRTA ... http://www.trueaudio.com/rta_abt1.htm

The reason why... is that it will speed up your learning curve of understanding your room's frequency response relative to where you place the speakers and your LP. I have found TrueRTA to be the easiest and quickest way to measure the room's frequency response. I have just been using my AVR's calibration mic plugged into the sound card on my PC. As my PC is already connected to my AVR for music playback I can use TrueRTA to generate pink noise over my system for the measurements. (otherwise you just need a CD with pink noise to play on your system)

Having this will allow you to measure and record exactly what is happening each time you move the speakers and/or LP to a different location in the room. The one combination that has the least peaks and dips in the frequency response in the lower Hz range will be part of the answer to "what is best?" No one else can answer that question for you.

Of course frequency response is only the first thing to tackle. To complicate matters it also needs to be juggled with how close speakers may end up near walls with with their reflections and the geometry of the speakers relative to the LP. But the improvements in sound quality from going through all of this is well worth the effort. Especially considering these improvements won't cost a cent.


The standard answer is that the center should be close to the same height as the tweeters of the L/R. However I have found I like it best with the center a little bit above the L/R. (like a foot or so) The reason why is that when listening to just 2ch stereo, center vocals seem to radiate out from above the line of my L/R. So that is where I like to place my center. I definitely wouldn't want it to much higher up or not below the drivers of the L/R.

And it will show major suck-outs and overall trends. For example just recently I moved into a new house and had to start from scratch with a room. The very first reading I took after my first attempt at placement showed a huge suck-out between 60 to 150 Hz. It was very obvious as my system sounded boring, unsurprisingly.

Attachment 243415

With the help of TrueRTA I have been able work on placement and setup to close that gap down. Things are starting to sound much better now.

Attachment 243416



I have RoomEQWizard as well and find it far less user-friendly with it's steep learning curve and more complicated setup. TrueRTA was in comparison up and running to a useful level almost straight away. Hence why I would recommend it to someone new to all of this. Well worth the price of a few CDs.


With his current placement maybe. If he tries a more conventionally accepted placement, then frequency response in the lower Hz range might be the biggest problem to tackle first.

Does RoomEQWizard v5 do ETC ?

So get a different couch.

We realize you've got to work with what you've got. The cool element here, is that you recognize some shortcomings, and you started a thread soliciting advice to address your particular scenario. ...That's cool, and puts you worlds ahead of many individuals that neither care, nor would they even attempt to address any of these issues we're discussing. So yeah, you'll get there, what you can, when you can.


If you could detail the floorplan a bit more, programs such as this can aid in that regard, allowing us to get a better idea of all the options and everything you've got to work with. Perhaps someone will see an option otherwise missed.



Good luck

Well that looks better. Does it sound better to you?



If someone has good subs in their room that covers 30 to 60 Hz well, then all bets are off. I myself prefer better quality 2-way bookshelf speakers over lower quality towers of the same dollar value. But each to their own. If you think you would prefer the look of towers, then get towers.

One thing you could try is to move the audio rack over to the right side of the fireplace, at a distance that mimics the wall on the left side. This would tend to equalize the speaker/"wall" interaction (not perfectly, but much better than the current layout).

Also, it would give you about two feet of play in the speaker position on each side, which would allow you to, hopefully, get better imaging.